Federal health officials urge use of Rapid 20-minute HIV test
From Wednesday, February 12, 2003
At the 10th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, federal officials urged a greater use of the new rapid HIV test that's now available according to this New York Times story (registration required):
The test, which the Food and Drug Administration approved in November, can provide results in 20 minutes rather than the few days it takes to get results of the standard H.I.V. test. In many cases, patients who have taken the standard test have failed to return to learn the results, hampering efforts to control the epidemic
...An estimated 800,000 to 900,000 Americans are living with H.I.V. But about 280,000 do not know that they are infected, and the finger-stick test whose wider use was urged here today is intended to identify many of them.